The 2017 hurricane season is forcing many communities and states to once again focus on disaster preparedness and the critical role of resilient power during emergencies. With millions left in the dark throughout the Southeast, hurricanes Harvey and Irma have been another wake-up call to the vulnerability of the country’s aging electricity system and a reminder that disadvantaged communities are often hardest hit when disasters strike. Despite widespread outages, a few success stories have also emerged, demonstrating the potential of solar+storage to deliver reliable power in the face of extreme weather.

Hurricane Irma was the most powerful storm to hit the U.S. coastline since Katrina struck land in August 2005. According to reporting by The Atlantic, more than 10 million people in Florida lost power, setting a new record for hurricane-related outages in the U.S. Hundreds of thousands of Florida residents were still without power more than a week after Irma passed through, and utilities have said it will take months of work to rebuild the grid. Another million customers lost power in Georgia along with hundreds of thousands in North and South Carolina. Harvey severed power to more than 300,000 customers in Texas.

These success stories are encouraging, but it’s disheartening to see communities suffer again through lessons that we should have learned before. Hurricane Katrina and Superstorm Sandy already showed us that the grid is vulnerable, diesel generators fail, and the most vulnerable members of our communities are most at risk during weather emergencies.

The following year, Federal Emergency Management Administration (FEMA) officials from the Northeastern states most impacted by Sandy issued a report for the President of the United States, Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Strategy: Stronger Communities, A Resilient Region. The report put forth recommendations that prioritized 1) addressing the heightened risk to vulnerable populations and 2) making the supply of power to critical community facilities smarter, more flexible and resilient to extreme weather events.

Many organizations, including Clean Energy Group, prepared analysis and reports addressing how the states impacted by Sandy could rebuild their grid infrastructure and distributed generation resources in more innovative, resilient, and sustainable ways to enable both mitigation and recovery strategies that could lessen the harmful impacts of long-term grid outages. Clean Energy Group also took on the role of assisting states and communities in implementing these recommendations, helping them get resilient power technologies installed and working to provide backup power where it is needed the most.

The project has seen significant progress and over the last four years: the cost of battery storage and solar PV has dramatically declined, more of these systems are being deployed, and more vulnerable populations are realizing the economic and resilient power benefits of solar+storage.

One recent example of our efforts is the Sterling Municipal Light Department’s energy storage system. Clean Energy Group just released a short documentary video on this project that is saving ratepayers in the Town of Sterling, Massachusetts about $400,000 a year in electricity system costs, while also providing resilient solar+storage power to the town’s police and emergency dispatch center in the event of a long-duration power outage. This project came about because of a state grant from the Community Clean Energy Resiliency Initiative, a program that was established by the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources in the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy. It demonstrates how state leadership and resources can enable a new, more resilient energy future.

In the immediate aftermath of the storms, as we struggle to comprehend the widespread damage and suffering they’ve caused, the challenges become more apparent. We can learn from this, and we can take steps now to avoid the same dire consequences the next time. But that will take resources and a commitment by leaders to implement new solutions to fix old problems.